TIPS: Fixing A Mistake

Be creative. There is no other tip. Every repair is unique.

When I built my office desktop, I took a large gouge out the top accidentally with the router. I thought this was a complete disaster. I filled it with wood filler, sanded it smooth and used a #2 lead pencil to recreate the grain pattern. After finishing with poly it became completely invisible. :-)

1. Toss it out & start over
2. On paper you have white out. On wood we have white paint.
3. Turn it inside out or upside down so you can’t see it.
4 Finish it and do a scratch & dent sale.
5. Be a creative woodworker and come up with a solution and repair it

Remember the difference between a Craftsman and Carpenter — They both make mistakes… a Craftsman knows how to fix them!

…and/or use the mis-take as an artistic element

You know MsDebbieP I’ve actually done that. Especially on rustic furniture.

in wood shop they taught us how to remove a dent in a piece of wood . Cover the dent with a wet rag and then place a hot clothes iron on top of the rag for about 20 seconds , sometimes it raises the dent to the point that you have to lightly sand it.

There are almost too many solutions to list, and I think I’ve tried 99% of them.

Hehe… 99%? I think I’ve tried maybe .01%. The world is full of creative people with creative ideas. I’m thinking that hanging around here I can climb that up to .03% or more. ;-)

Once I fixed a sliding window with broken hardware by fixing a bic pen cap under the window in the track. Those caps are made of some kind of super durable and smooth plastic. The window slid in the track as well as when it was new with the rollers. :-)

LMAO Brian, cool thinking though!!!

Brian, to have tried 99% of the fixes, you have to had made a LOT of mistakes, and a lot of different ones at that. I try to limit myself to 5 a year (New Years resolution) and that usaully lasts about 30 minutes into the first project of the year!

Cool ideas gang
Here’s a wild one,when you have a white ring under your finish,put a small amount of naphtha on the affected area and then light it with a lighter or match and watch
the ring go away,of course you want to use a very small amount,just enough to warm up the area. If that’s too scary just use some blo or tung oil on a cloth and then apply a clothes iron without steam and iron the wet cloth over the white spot.

Jim, that’s a good one. That goes in the knowledge vault for sure.

Hi Brian these are some tricks I learned from Charles Neil

I try to make the repair as a new focal point. Adding wood or removing that changes the design. It makes others look at an interesting detail, but to me it stands out as that oops moment I will not forget reminding myself every time I see it to take more care, specially when people comment on the new detail. " oh look that’s an interesting detail" and I think to myself do it right next time chris!